This second Thursday of September I once again found myself on the summit of Mount Wichita.
Unlike
yesterday, today there was no extremely tall man on the summit screaming some sort of religious epiphany of unknown denomination.
In the view you see here, from the summit, in the distance, you are looking southeast at the Lake Wichita Dam, and, on the far right, the Lake Wichita Boat Ramp.
The Wichita Boat Ramp has been in the news the past day or two due to the Lake Wichita Revitalization Project getting a half million dollar grant, with that grant going to pay for part of an upgraded boat launch, with added docks, restrooms, a plaza and concert stage venue. Total cost over a million for this part of the revitalization.
Below is a screencap of what is proposed for the upgraded Lake Wichita Boat Ramp...
If I remember right I have previously verbalized the fact that I have not been in Wichita Falls long enough to know if the town has a history of getting public works projects done in a timely fashion, or if the town dawdles along, ineptly, in slow motion, with a public works project, such as was, and is, the case with my previous location in Texas,
Fort Worth's Trinity River Central City Uptown Panther Island District Vision has been
dithering along for most of this century, dithering to the point where that project has become known far and wide as America's Biggest Boondoggle, currently stalled on building three bridges over dry land to connect the Fort Worth mainland to an imaginary island.
Fort Worth's Boondoggle is short on funding, eagerly awaiting J.D. Granger's mama, Kay, securing around a half billion dollars, via pork barrel federal funding earmarks, which Fort Worth's corrupt congresswoman hopes to attach to the spending bill currently winding its way through the House, so that her son can remain gainfully employed for another decade or two, til he is old enough to retire.
The Fort Worth Boondoggle has never been voted on by the public. The funding for the Fort Worth Boondoggle depends on federal handouts and various grants and schemes. No bond issue voted on by the public is funding the Fort Worth Boondoggle, hence limping along as The Boondoggle receives a trickle of funding.
The Lake Wichita Revitalization Project is a relatively small public works project compared to Fort Worth's economic development project masked as an un-needed flood control project.
Fort Worth's Boondoggle currently is estimated to cost in the billion dollar zone. The Lake Wichita Revitalization Project is a fraction of a billion, somewhere in the 25 to 40 million dollar range.
The Wichita Falls project seems much better thought out than Fort Worth's project. The Wichita Falls project actually addresses a problem, that being a sick reservoir, restoring the reservoir to being a recreational amenity, likely generating a huge return on the investment.
So, I do not understand why Wichita Falls does not fund the Lake Wichita project in the way progressive towns in other parts of America fund public works projects, but instead is funding the Lake Wichita Revitalization Project in the Fort Worth Way, as in begging for handouts, with the project not fully funded and thus not underway.
It would seem to me that the Wichita Falls voting population could easily be sold on the idea of taxing themselves to fix Lake Wichita. It would seem a very small increase on the local sales tax could easily raise the money required.
I really hope I am wrong and Wichita Falls turns out to be a different Texas city than what I experienced in Fort Worth. So far that has totally been the case. Have I mentioned before that, unlike Fort Worth, the parks in Wichita Falls all have modern facilities, including running water?
